Just as the true joy inherent in photography is the sharing of memories captured, this “sharing” theme plays pretty nicely when it spills over into the business end of this industry as well.
Witness the power of the Internet and, more specifically, Bill McCurry’s online pub – “McCurry Marketing Idea Exchange” an idea, he tells us, “That started as a follow-up to the live DIMA Idea Exchanges.” The “Idea Exchange” is published weekly and McCurry is quick to add, “is not for free – to receive the newsletter you must agree to share at least one idea a year.”
Thus, this story was born. As we are taking a look at what may be the final days of film photography in this issue, at least on the consumer side of the fence, a recent idea that centered on shinning a spotlight on 35mm rolls of film was certainly worthy of some space in this issue of Pic Biz.
To set the stage we’ll simply say, and I’m sure most of you will agree, there are undoubtedly lots o undeveloped 35mm rolls of film out there – hidden in draws, tucked away in closets, forgotten in armoires.
Well, using McCurry’s Idea Exchange, Tim Jones, of Perfect Prints Camera Centre in Hobart (the capital of the Australian state of Tasmania) posted his Film Amnesty promotion idea a while back. The basis of the promotion, as Jones posted, was this, “I reckon every household has a few unprocessed films and I know of somebody who has 200!” Jones begin promoting, in-store and in local ads, his idea of Film Amnesty, urging his customers to bring in their unprocessed 35mm rolls of film and he would develop them and some gangbuster prices. The idea caught fire.“People have always felt guilty about having these rolls at home and once they get them processed they can’t wait to tell everybody!” he exclaimed on The Exchange. Jones also explained that he basically promoted the idea with a, “public service point of view and initially send out a press release. I followed that up with a sort of advertorial in the local paper.”
Here’s where McCurry’s Exchange kicked this into high gear. Chris Lydle, the editor of Exchange, who coined the phrase, “I will steal no idea before its time,” jumped on this one for his own store, Chris’ Camera Center South in Aiken, SC. Lydle took empty 35mm cartridges from his processing area. Threw them in a drawer with an old camera and used that to illustrate his signage and advertising.
Then, Artcraft Camera location in Kingston, New York, tweaked it a bit and ran with it. “Customers were wearing a groove in my floor bringing in their 35mm rolls again.” Said Todd Fitzgerald, Artcraft’s Vice President.
With regard to this chain of events, as McCurry likes to point out, “The important part of the process here is the idea ‘exchange’. Tim started it, Chris added an illustration, and it went from there. Each person who used it tweaked it a bit and shared what they learned so the knowledge continued to grow.”
The fact these aforementioned retailers simply took action isn’t lost on McCurry either. “Of course the other point here, that many don’t see is just doing something. These guys didn’t didn’t convene a committee to study it, or ‘think about it for a month.’ They just did it! Action is critical! Just do something, isn’t that what it takes?”
Do something indeed, as others continued to add elements to this original seed, the idea took on a different form for each. For Artcraft Camera, as Fitzgerald explains, the thought process was, why stop at film?
“We did a little different spin on it. Not only did we offer the film in the program but we included slide scans and shoebox scans as well, he explained. “ Our intent was to get very large quantities. For film there is a five-roll minimum, this way we don’t give up the profit from our everyday customers. For slides we did an eighty carousel minimum and shoe box scans started at two hundred photos.”
Fitzgerald said that he ran two full page ads in the local papers and claimed, “To say the response has been amazing would be an under statement. We have had grooves of people coming through the doors with bags and boxes of money. I mean film. If you took a look at my lab you would think it was in the hay days of film.”
Fitzgerald added an amusing, and very telling footnote to this rather profitable “exchange” by concluding, “A funny thing happened while I was at my daughter’s first t-ball practice. I had a customer accuse us of ruining his day off. He proceeded to tell me his wife made him spend the whole day going through all the boxes in the attic to find all their slides and photos. He said my email made his wife feel guilty. I graciously apologized but was smiling on the inside. He then told me he was just kidding and it was really nice to go through all of those memories again. I think the header of the email is what got to his wife. We started the email off with a question. Do you want to be remembered as the person who cut down your family tree?”
Apparently no one does.
To check out the McCurry Marketing Idea Exchange and read how the above unfolded go to www.photoimagenews.com/mccurry243.htm. Simply click through to check out past “idea exchanges” as well.
